Among the Free (2 page)

If we can't defeat the Population Police, nobody can.

Luke and his friends had tried to destroy certain Population Police documents, but there had been copies they hadn't known about. They'd tried to protect rebels who were making fake identity cards for illegal third children, but the Population Police had killed the rebels anyway. They'd tried to pass out stockpiled food to starving people, but the Population Police had gotten it all back.

If we can't defeat the Population Police
 . . . Truly hopeless words seemed to push their way into his mind:
Why bother?

Luke closed his eyes and leaned his head against the cool glass of the window. And then he surrendered himself to sleep.

When he woke up, the van was stopped and the man with the medals on his chest was yelling at all the boys to get out and stand at attention.

“We're here! No time to waste! Out! Out, you lazy dogs!”

Luke was used to being yelled at, because of the stables. He knew that yells were quickly followed by swats and boxed ears and beatings if he didn't obey instantly. He
stumbled through the van door before he'd even glanced outside. An icy wind pushed at him the minute he landed on the ground; mud sucked at his boots and made walking difficult. But he lined up and snapped his arm into attention position. Only then did he dare to look around, letting his eyes dart from side to side.

They were parked before a long, low building, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but mud. No—there was more: A lineup of jeeps, more than Luke had ever seen before, stood idling just beyond the building. Uniformed men came rushing out of the building toward the vehicles. The man with the medals started counting off boys and shoving them in the direction of the jeeps.

“You two, go with Officer Ludwick. Over there. You two, with Officer Straley. You two—” The man pounded Luke's back, almost knocking him to the ground. Between the wind and his struggle to keep from falling, Luke barely heard the man's orders. Did he say Luke was supposed to go with Officer Hook? Or was it Officer Hawk? He hoped the other boy with him—the one who'd said Luke smelled like horse manure—had been paying attention. Luke scrambled off behind everyone else.

The mud still tugged at his boots, almost pulling one off. A memory flashed through his mind from childhood: Luke and his brothers running barefoot through mud. Barefoot was so much easier, but Mother always made them spray off their feet before they came into the house. . . .

And then Luke shut that memory off, slamming a door in his mind. He couldn't think about Mother or his brothers right now. He just had to concentrate on reaching the proper jeep, sliding in, pulling his feet away from the ground before the jeep leaped forward.

“Officer Houk signing out, jeep serial number 80256,” said one of the men in the front seat. He was speaking into a small phonelike object, maybe a walkie-talkie or some other kind of two-way radio. “With one driver and”—he glanced at Luke and the other boy in the backseat—“two assistants. Bound for Chiutza. Over.”

“Copy that. Mission approved,” a voice crackled out of the radio.

Chiutza?
Luke thought.
Is that a place?
He'd never heard of it, but there was so much he'd never heard of before. He'd never even stepped foot off his parents' farm until he was twelve years old. His parents hadn't liked to discuss things beyond the edges of their property.

“Why talk of things that only make us sad?” Luke's mother had explained once, tears glistening in her eyes.

Luke couldn't remember what he'd asked her that particular day. He could remember asking only once about why he'd had to hide, why the Government thought it was wrong for him to be alive, why he couldn't go around freely like his brothers did. He wished now that he'd asked lots of questions:
What did you think my life would be worth, hiding like that? What did you think would become of me? Why didn't you and all your friends and neighbors and the rest of the
country do something to stop the Government, way back in the beginning? What would you do if you were in a speeding jeep and everyone thought you were on the Population Police's side and you had to pretend to be, but really—

“Here.” The man holding the radio surprised Luke by tossing something into the backseat. “We've got at least an hour before we get there. Eat.”

Luke started to reach for the packet that landed between him and the other boy, but the other boy grabbed it first. The boy peeled back greasy paper to reveal two hunks of cornbread, which he instantly crammed into his mouth in one bite. He chewed with his mouth open, leering at Luke and dropping crumbs on the seat.

“But—” The wind carried away Luke's protest. Luke clamped his teeth together, swallowing everything he wanted to say.

“You'll need your energy in Chiutza,” Officer Houk said from the front seat.
Now
he turned around, now that all evidence of the other boy's greed was out of sight. “You have to knock on every door and summon every resident to a meeting in the town square.”

“Why?” It was the other boy who asked this. Stealing Luke's food must have made him cocky.

Luke flinched, waiting for Officer Houk to reach back and strike the boy, and maybe Luke, too, for good measure. But Officer Houk only frowned.

“We're issuing new identification cards to every citizen in the country,” Officer Houk said. “We're doing it all at
once, in a single day. That's where all these jeeps are going, to give out the I.D.'s in other towns and villages.” He gestured at the vehicles ahead of them and behind them, some already turning off the main road to smaller, rutted paths.

Luke knew better than to ask the next question. He knew about officers' tempers. But he couldn't stop the words bursting out of his own mouth: “Why do people need new I.D.'s? What's wrong with the old ones?”

Officer Houk narrowed his eyes at Luke, studying Luke's face.
He really sees me now. He'll remember me,
Luke thought, fighting the familiar terror that had haunted him ever since he'd come out of hiding, the familiar desire to scream,
Don't look at me!
Luke didn't even bother to brace himself to be hit, because it didn't matter. No punishment was worse than being stared at.

But Officer Houk only shrugged.

“There's nothing wrong with the old I.D.'s,” he said. “The new ones are just better.”

And Luke, who had to fight so hard to read facial expressions, who had to struggle to interpret tones in strangers' voices, watched carefully as Officer Houk turned back around to face the wind rushing at them.

He's lying,
Luke thought, hopefully. Then, with less certainty:
If he's lying, I think I know the truth. Could it be—?

I
t had been one of their riskiest plans. At Population Police headquarters, Luke and his friends had heard rumors that the leaders were collecting identity cards for some big test, to sort out legal citizens and illegal third children once and for all.

“They're all in one spot,” Nina had whispered in Luke's ear once when she'd brought food out to the stable. Nina worked in the headquarters kitchen; she was the only one of his friends that Luke ever saw. That day he'd blinked stupidly at her, not quite understanding until she hissed, “We can destroy them.”

Then Luke had wanted to ask,
How?
and
What good would that do?
and
What if it's all a trap?
and
What makes you think we have any prayer of succeeding?
But Nina had stepped back quickly, gathering up serving trays, so he'd had no time to say anything after she told him what to do.

Luke's assignment had been to place a particularly pungent glob of horse manure in the middle of a path, in order
to delay an officer who was rushing to repair a security fence. Luke had taken the manure from Jenny's stall; he'd arranged it carefully to look fresh and accidental and unplanned. After that he'd heard nothing more about I.D.'s, nothing more about the plan.

He thought it must have failed. Failed, like every other plan.

But if they're issuing new I.D.'s to everyone in the country, maybe the old ones really were destroyed. Maybe . . .

Maybe it didn't matter. And even if it did, how could Luke take any pride in the plan's success when all he had done was arrange horse manure?

Luke shivered in the bitter wind pushing its way into the jeep. The bleak countryside flashed past him: leafless trees and lifeless fields.

“My dad had a mechanic's shop, back home,” the other boy said suddenly. “I'm good with cars.”

Luke forced himself to turn and look at the other boy.

“Yeah?” Luke said. Did this kid actually think Luke would want to be friendly with someone who'd stolen his bread?

“Yeah,” the boy said. “So it was stupid that they had me polishing shoes at Population Police headquarters.”

He said this softly, as if he didn't want the officer and the driver in the front to hear.

Luke shrugged.

“What did you expect?”

The boy got a dreamy look on his face that softened all his features.

“Food,” he said. “I just wanted to eat. To have a full stomach for once in my life. Isn't that why everyone joined up?”

Luke shrugged again, and went back to staring out at the dead landscape. He knew that the Population Police had control of the entire country's food supply; he knew that every family had to have someone working for the Population Police or they'd get no food. But he still felt like yelling at the boy,
The Population Police kill children, don't you know that? Do you even care? Is your full stomach worth other kids' lives?

Luke and the other boy were silent for the rest of the drive. The men in the front seat didn't seem to be talking to each other either, but Officer Houk kept holding the radio to his mouth and muttering, “Seeking report on identification process in Searcy,” or, “What's the progress in Ryana?” Luke wondered vaguely if he was in charge of other units as well, or if he was just nosy.

Then the ruts and potholes in the road grew so huge that Officer Houk put his radio down and concentrated on telling the driver which way to go: “Ease it out gradually—oof! That just caught the right rear tire. You don't think the axle's bent, do you?” Twice Luke and the other boy had to get out and push. Luke thought he heard the other boy muttering, “Stupid, stupid, stupid. This is no way to treat a motor vehicle.” But Luke made no attempt to catch the
boy's eye or to exchange “at least we're in this together” shrugs.

When they finally reached Chiutza, hours later, Luke was sweating despite the cold, and his bones were jarred from so much bouncing.

“Quickly,” Officer Houk ordered, hurrying everyone out of the jeep. “Get everyone in the town square by”—he glanced at his watch—“eleven o'clock. Each of you take one street then report back and I'll assign the next one.”

“Street” was too fancy a word for the trash-strewn paths lying before them. Luke could tell that once upon a time, years and years and years ago, Chiutza had had nicely paved streets and concrete sidewalks and sturdy houses. Now the streets were more gravel than pavement, the sidewalks fell off into gaping holes, and the houses were ramshackle, with doors hanging loose and windows patched with plastic.

“Stop gawking and go!” Officer Houk shouted.

Luke saw that the driver and the other boy were scurrying to the right and straight ahead, so Luke veered to the left. The first house he came to looked somehow sadder than all the rest, because it had clearly once been quite grand. It had two stories while most of the others had only one, and it was surrounded by a painted fence, now broken down in decay.

Don't look,
Luke told himself.

He pushed aside a cracked gate and went to pound on the front door.

“Open up! Population Police!” he shouted.

And then he shivered, because who was he to be yelling those words? He remembered his brother Mark playing cruel tricks on him when he was a child, pretending Luke's worst nightmares had come true. He remembered a time he'd heard those words from the inside of a house, when he'd had to hide to save his life.

And he remembered another time, when he'd been caught and carried away. . . .

Desperately, Luke shoved himself against the door, as if he could escape his own memories. The door gave way, rusty hinges tearing away from rotting wood. Luke stumbled into a dim living room and found an old woman sitting on a faded couch. Sitting there knitting, as if she'd had no intention of answering the door.

Luke stared at her and she stared at him. Then she said, almost mildly, “It wasn't locked. You didn't have to break it down.”